Report: Clippers owner Donald Sterling has cancer

The newspaper reported that Sterling has been battling prostate cancer for several years.

Sterling is 80 years old.

Clippers coaches and players said they were unaware of Sterling’s cancer.

“If that is true, my thoughts and prayers are with him,” Clippers Forward Blake Griffin said. “Nobody deserves to go through something like that.”

“Didn’t know it until just now. You know, I don’t have a reaction to that,” Coach Doc Rivers said. “I hope it’s not true.”

The NBA banned Sterling for life after recordings of him saying racist statements were released online last weekend.

The league also fined him $2.5 million.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is urging the other owners to vote and force Sterling to sell the team.

That requires three-fourths of the league’s 30 owners.

The league’s advisory & finance committee held its first meeting on the Sterling matter Thursday.

The committee did not set a date for a vote.

The 10-member committee said in a statement that it “unanimously agreed to move forward as expeditiously as possible” on the process of terminating Sterling’s ownership and planned to reconvene next week.